Pay-TV penetration set to rise in India

There’s likely to be gradual acceleration of pay-TV penetration in India and leading to major growth over the next five years, according to a report from the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) report compiled by PricewaterhouseCoopers, unveiled on September 19th.

According to the CII report, TV penetration in India is already at 60 per cent, but this is much lower than in developed countries where it is greater than 90 per cent. “Hence, there is considerable amount of potential to increase the number of TV households in India. Pay-TV penetration among TV-owning households is expected to increase steadily in five years, driving the growth in television sector,” the report stated.

As of December 2013, India has some 129 million TV-owning households, of which 64 million are analogue cable TV subscribers and 30 million have digital cable. Satellite DTH subscribers stand at 35 million. This number is expected to register higher growth in five years helped by the existing digitisation of cable networks.

The CII says in 2017 DTH subscribers would be 56 million, rising to 64 million during 2018. Cable’s digital subscribers would rise from 85 million in 2017 to 90 million in 2018. Analogue cable would – in effect – evaporate to only around 5 million by 2018 as the digitisation process wraps up.